Applied econometric work takes a superficial approach to causality. Understanding economic affairs, making good policy decisions, and progress in the economic discipline depend on our ability to infer causal relations from data. We review the dominant approaches to causality in econometrics, and...

The large majority of the criteria for model selection are functions of the usual variance estimate for a regression model. The validity of the usual variance estimate depends on some assumptions, most critically the validity of the model being estimated. This is often violated in model...

Econometric Methodology is based on logical positivist principles. Since logical positivism has collapsed, it is necessary to re-think these foundations. We show that positivist methodology has led econometricians to a meaningless search for patterns in the data. An alternative methodology which...

Strategies for comparison of alternative tests do not receive much attention in econometrics. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of stringency and illustrate it in the context of a very simple hypothesis testing problem. Systematic use of this concept can be very helpful in...

Leamer first pointed out that a regression model is valid only if all of the assumptions under which it is constructed are valid. In particular, this means that all of relevant regressors which are determinants must be included. In practice, applied econometricians assume that whatever model...

The glaring failure of modern macroeconomics to predict the Global Financial Crisis, and to provide remedies for the Great Recession which followed, has led to renewed interest in alternative approaches to Macroeconomics. There is huge amount of ongoing work aimed at creating a Macroeconomics...

Economic models translate real problems to an artificial world, and calculate outcomes. The match between artificial worlds populated by rational robots, and the real world, is never assessed. Instead, models are judged on aesthetic grounds, involving conformity to preconceived principles of...

This is an introductory article which explains the importance of explicit consideration and modeling of causality, contrary to current econometric practice, in order to use data set for extraction of meaningful information. One of the easiest to understand approaches to causality is via...

Analytic evaluation of heteroskedasticity consistent covariance matrix estimates (HCCME) is difficult because of the complexity of the formulae currently available. We obtain new analytic formulae for the bias of a class of estimators of the covariance matrix of OLS in a standard linear...

Applied econometric work takes a superficial approach to causality. Understanding economic affairs, making good policy decisions, and progress in the economic discipline depend on our ability to infer causal relations from data. We review the dominant approaches to causality in econometrics, and...